


paint my thoughts in technicolor, split them like stained glass

by nctinee



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Abstract, Ambiguity, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood, Existentialism, Huang Ren Jun-centric, I Don't Even Know, Implied renhyuckyang, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi, Open to Interpretation, but it's really not important, lapslock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27855210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nctinee/pseuds/nctinee
Summary: 'the stars are beautiful tonight aren’t they?'stars? there are no stars in the morning.'sure there are. you just can’t see them.'he knows that voice.can you hear me?'of course i can. i am you.'
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Liu Yang Yang
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	paint my thoughts in technicolor, split them like stained glass

**Author's Note:**

> so last night was drinking lemonade and eating pasta and *trying* not to listen to the Album That Shall Not Be Named Or Else I'll Have A Fucking Breakdown while reading these two norenmin existentialism fics and BOOM my brain had a moment where it was like, 'you gotta write this' and now after writing a bit of it last night I'm here finishing it up.
> 
> tw//blood, lots of mentions; drowning?? idk just be aware; LOTS of mental illness stuff. anxiety, depression, dissociation (this certainly wasn't on purpose idk a lot about dissociation and didn't mean for this to come off as that but it could be if you think so. just be aware pls); mentions of death; visions? hallucinations? it's really up to you

when he closes his eyes, stars explode behind his lids in brilliant oranges and yellows, then mold together as purples and blues. he feels the explosions ricochet down into his throat and tie his tongue into knots, then into his lungs and make him gasp for air. his fingers tingle from the shards of stars that impale his body from the inside out, and there’s a chill that comes with them, a gust of wind that comes into his body and cleans him out. blood seeps into the niches between bones and muscle, fills him and chokes him until it’s dripping down his chin and out his ears.

he feels the pain of the stars, of the way he gasps for air, but it makes him feel alive.

there’s a tug on his sleeve, or maybe on the skin of his arm—he can’t tell the difference because there’s so many sensations happening at once—and someone whispers _renjun_ but it’s so quiet. he can’t tell if it’s a real person or the moon whispering to him from the black expense of the sky, but he doesn’t answer anyway.

_have you ever thought about what would happen if we all just, dropped dead? have you thought about what would happen to the world then? would everything just… break away and die?_

the blood drips down his face and soaks up in his shirt. it’s dripping out his mouth now, covering his teeth and coating his tongue in metal. 

he gets his answer in the silence. 

_if i died, the world wouldn’t stop. but if we all died, there wouldn’t be anything to keep the world going._

there’s another tug at his sleeve. 

he falls, but instead of another explosion of stars at his shoulder, he falls right through the floor.

there’s rain. it falls up instead of down and tears at his clothes like bullets, piercing his skin and driving through bone.

he looks down at his feet, and sees them sinking through clouds. he feels nothing, just a harsh breeze chilling his toes through his shoes and rain hitting the bottoms of his feet. if he looks past the clouds he feels his head start to spin, feels his lungs fill up with air. the abyss of light blue stares back at him, and he feels a chill drip down his spine.

_turn your head, junnie. no need to look._

he can feel blood pooling in his head, dripping out his eyes and falling to the world below him.

he tries to wipe it away, but nothing is there.

there are buildings below him, laid out like a gridboard. it’s all gray, orderly, quiet. the grid stretches on for miles until fog obscures the rest and creeps into his head. up here, he feels like god.

he looks back at his feet, then at the black backdrop sky. he thinks it was blue a second ago, but that doesn’t mean much to him. it could’ve been a minute or an hour that he was here sinking into the clouds, and he wouldn’t know the difference. the wind doesn’t change, nor the rain, but he still feels like he’s a particle in a snowglobe, shaken and swirling round and round in circles.

the stars are back, exploding at his nape as he cranes his head to look back at the city. he’s closer to it now, and he can see a person standing on the roof directly under him. their face is blurred out, blank, foggy at the edges. he wonders if that’s what he looks like to them.

he reaches a hand out to the person, and they reach back. his vision swirls, and the gray mixes like paint on a pallet. 

just before they touch, the world around him shatters like a mirror. the shards fall up and cut him like knives. he should feel a burn where they pierce his skin like the rain, but there’s nothing.

the city is gone, and it’s all black, just him on the cloud. it’s still raining, but with blood now instead of water. he feels lightheaded.

his feet start to fall away from the cloud.

_maybe spinning forever won’t feel so bad. at least i’ll be going somewhere._

a hand pushes past the white, sunkissed and dotted with moles. 

he is yanked back, and the world stops spinning.

_he was hanging over the railing, yang. i thought—_

_hey, you got him down and he's safe. that's all that matters._

there's a soft hand carding through his hair, sheets scratching at his cheek. he thinks he hears voices, but his head feels like it's underwater.

_hi junnie baby, how are you feeling?_

the voice should be melodic in his ears. he knows this voice, but all it sounds like is metal grating on glass.

_you uh, you went a little wild last night. you want me to make some breakfast and then we can talk about it?_

he tries to move his mouth to respond, but he focuses too much on the way his body feels like it's being lumped into a pile of clay and molded into different shapes over and over again. 

his muscles tense and relax over and over and over again, clenching and unclenching, spasming and falling still. over and over and over and over and.

the water gets into his mouth, rushes down his throat and fills his lungs like the blood. he tries to swallow, chokes, coughs, but the voices keep chattering away.

_help._ he wants to say.

_Save me._

_HELP ME._

_P L E A S E._

they don't hear him.

the darkness swallows him again.

When he opens his eyes, he’s met with a starry night sky.

There’s laughter and hushed whispers as what he assumes is a movie being played, but doesn’t dare tip his head up to see if he’s imagining it.

He’s laying on a soft cotton blanket, arms pillowed under his head. He can feel the dull pokes of the grass being crushed underneath his body, but it doesn’t bother him enough to focus on the feeling. There’s no breeze, no rustling of nature around him. The people around him are engaged in the movie, and he admires the way the light bounces off of their faces.

“You enjoying the movie Injun-ah?” a voice murmurs into his ear.

He doesn’t think twice before answering. “What movie is this?”

There’s a laugh. “What do you mean, ‘what movie is this’, you literally begged us to come see this with you,” and with a turn of his head, he’s face to face with a smiling Jeno Lee.

“Us?”

“Yeah, Mark-hyung, Jisung and Chenle are off getting snacks from one of the food trucks,” Jeno turns over on his side to give him his full attention, “You okay? You’re asking some really weird questions.”

No, he’s not okay. He hasn’t seen Jeno since—

“Did we miss anything?” Mark asks. He doesn’t move his eyes away from the screen as he mindlessly bites into his hot dog, like this isn’t one of the weirdest moments of Renjun’s life.

“Nah, they’ve just started figuring out how to layer the dreams. Where are my nachos? Chenle?”

Chenle hands the nachos over just before Jisung steals a chip without looking away from his phone screen. It’s weird though, there’s nothing on it except the same starry sky he was looking at a few minutes ago.

They sit in silence for a while, watching the movie and commenting about how the concept of dreaming within dreams works. He tries to pay attention, to ignore the weird feeling in his gut, but it doesn’t work. Eventually, he feels the grass underneath him get sharper, the movie screen a bit brighter, the pitch of Chenle’s voice gets higher. His ears start to ring, but it’s faint.

“Y’know, I wish we could do this more often,” Chenle whispers. From where the younger is sitting next to Mark and with Mark on his right side, Renjun can just barely make out what the other says, but he manages to catch it. 

"Do what? Watch movies together?" He asks the Chenle, and only gets more unsettled when he laughs. It's unhumorous, monotone, so unlike Chenle.

"No hyung, hang out together. Like, together _together_ ." He leans back on his hands to look at Renjun, but his eyes don’t reflect the white of the screen. They're endless pools of black, calling out to him to take a dive. “With Hyuck hyung and Yangyang. For _real_.”

Jisung inhales a breath at the young Chinese boy’s words, and starts to say, “Chenle! You can’t _say_ that to him—” but gets cut off by Renjun.

“This isn’t real?”

All heads turn to look at him like he’s revealed a dark secret. It’s a sea of black eyes as he looks from person to person, but he can’t tell their features apart now. Fog creeps back into his vision.

“Of course not Junnie.” Jeno says. His eyes are black too, mouth turned up more into a grimace than his usual smile. His teeth are stained black and dotted with yellow and white, and they look like the starry sky. 

“We’re dead.”

Everyone laughs like Jeno’s just told a funny joke. Soon, the laughter turns to screams.

His vision is flooded with the starry sky that rests on Jeno’s teeth, and he’s sling-shot right off the ground, hurtling toward the stars like a comet.

metal, cold and sturdy, rests against his cheek and legs.

the voices are gone, disappeared minutes—hours?—ago. it's strange, he misses them.

he smacks his lips together and swallows a few times to wet his dry mouth, but it's no use. his tongue feels like sandpaper, his teeth like cacti. the air smells like sulfur, so he covers his nose with his t-shirt.

there's no breeze, no noise. silence.

it's so much louder than sound, he realizes.

he tries to scream, but it comes out strangled, hoarse. like he's spent the past hours—days?—screaming. 

a bird flies by, backwards. like it’s on rewind. it blinks at him and chirps, and then it’s gone.

he looks at the oranges and yellows, the purples and blues of the sky and watches them mix together like watercolor. he wants to dip his hands in them, watch as his hands and arms get consumed by the technicolor, feel the clouds slip through the spaces of his fingers like cotton candy. maybe let the color wash all the way up to his hair, consume his thoughts and split his mind into little stained glass shards.

_the stars are beautiful tonight aren’t they?_

stars? there are no stars in the morning.

_sure there are. you just can’t see them._

he knows that voice.

_can you hear me?_

_of course i can. i am you._

wait. 

what?

the color drips down the page, drows the grass in purple and covers the buildings in red. he is blue, swirling and roaring like the ocean. he wants to drown in it, let it consume him. 

maybe it already has.

_oh my god._

he reaches a hand out high, to try and reach the technicolor sky.

_holy—_

he can’t reach it from where he’s sitting on the fire escape, so he stands. maybe if he touches the color, his world won’t be so gray anymore. maybe he’ll see them again.

_someone call an ambulance._

his whole body shakes. the sky spins, the colors mix.

_where did he come from?_

no. no, it’s all turning brown.

_911, what’s your emergency?_

he still can’t reach it. he has to reach it before they’re all gone.

_some guy—he—_

higher, higher he reaches, but he still can’t touch. 

_oh god._

maybe if he falls, he'll go up instead of down. maybe they’ll catch him. maybe. maybe. 

_renjun._

this time, he doesn’t go through the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> this was certainly an experience. did I enjoy this? yes-ish. will I do this again? probably not. am I mentally okay? ofc not.
> 
> I also really enjoyed playing around with structure in this. the lapslock for most of the fic but proper punctuation during *that* scene? Genius methinks.
> 
> tell me what you thought or if you want me to burn in hell! I certainly wish I could!  
> [twt](http://twitter.com/kunsparkles)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/kunsparkles)


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